The culture three-step: law department dancing with client (Philips)

“Culture” seems such a woolly word, grandiloquence without ground. Yet, consider the law department of Phillips Electronics North America, molding itself to its company’s three “pillars”: (1) Designed around the customer, (2) easy to experience, and (3) advanced (top of mind, Vol. 4, at 4).

The Vice President, Corporate & Commercial Law, explains that the law department achieves the first pillar, customer alignment, by understanding the business and working closely with it. It achieves the second, user-friendliness, by being accessible and responsive; the third pillar, advanced, finds its counterpart in legal “using all the tools available – knowledge management, intranet training, law firm extranets and more.” Plus, process improvements contribute. One can pooh-pooh these stratagems, but at least the law department has taken its lead from the client’s customer-facing branding efforts.